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At this point, even blinking hurts. The mouse is slick under your right hand, but the keyboard is a familiar pressure on your left. One of your teammates barks out a call and your swipe your mouse minutely, turning a full 180 to run from the enemy on your tail.
Your name is Kozume Kenma, but that doesn’t matter right now. Right now, you’re KZKN, a level 30 Burst Mage trying to destroy the other team’s nexus.
Technically you’re an archmage, but you’re not really one for specifics.
As time ticks down and your health bar gets emptier and emptier, you’re able take down a few more enemy defenders. Your face scrunches in concentration, eyes squinting against the flashes of light whenever you or someone else casts a spell. Unfortunately for you, the game ends with a flaming banner proclaiming “DEFEAT” taking up your screen. You lean back into your chair and dig the heels of your hands into your eyes. The pressure triggers bursts of light in the pitch black of your shut eyes, and you let the background music of the game blend with the ping of the chat.
God damn your eyes are dry. You’ve been trying to get to a point where you could attempt to get some sleep since after dinner seven hours ago; playing games to tire yourself out, but not to the point where you’re overtired and will end up disoriented in the morning, or stuck with sleep paralysis like you’re prone to when you get to that level of exhausted. When you ran through both your GS’s and your POP’s batteries, you plugged them in and flipped on your PC to play online instead. The Japanese servers were, as expected, pretty dead at 1 am the night before school began, so you started up a game of LMAO with some of the American guys on your friends list. Even having to work extra hard to communicate in a different language was better than sitting in silence and letting your anxiety take over.
You take a few deep breaths—as deep as you can without flipping the switch in your stomach that will leave you nauseous. You already know that since you’re not going to get much sleep before you have to wake up and go to school—and isn’t that fucking terrifying? The fact that you have to get up on your own, walk yourself to the station, ride the train, then walk the rest of the way to school alone because even though he’s still in Tokyo, Kuroo is dorming this year and he’ll be a fifty minute, two-train ride away—you’re going to wake up to nausea and a pounding heart.
The chat pings again and you finally lower your hands, slowly opening your eyes to adjust to the brightness of the screen. Despite the effort, you still have to squint.
TTGH: gg
ECBG: gg!!
ECBG: are you playing another game?
ECBG: isn't it like 3 am in tokyo??
KZKN: gg
KZKN: no im logging off now
KZKN: see you guys later
TTGH: l8r sk8r
ECBG: go to sleep!
KZKN: its about 2
KZKN: i have school tomorrow
KZKN: goodnight
ECBG: good night! :)
TTGH: night
True to your word, you close the window and shut the computer off. But instead of getting into your bed, you stay seated at the desk. With a heavy sigh you pull your knees up and rest your head on top, eyes open and staring into your streetlamp-lit room. The shape of your furniture and the shadows around them distend and stretch, but you keep staring. Unblinking, the image you see distorts until the bookshelf in the corner of your room is nothing but a tall blur.
Before long, static starts to ring in your ears, and you resist the twitch in your hand that’s telling you to grab your phone and put on some music before the static clears up your brain starts thinking again.
No use avoiding it. This happens every year. Every year, the night before school starts, you’re up. Sure, Kuroo isn’t here this time, but that’s not any different from any other year. He’s not even here every year. It’s fine. This has happened every year since you turned four and your mom told you that you would be going to kindergarten in the Spring. You’re fine. You’ve pulled all-nighters before. It’s just the first day of school. All you have to do is not fall asleep during the opening ceremonies. Your teachers probably aren’t even going to be doing much anyway aside from course introductions and handing out a syllabus. Worse situations have happened. Higher stakes, less sleep, more anxiety. It’s just that, it’s not every year that you’re captain of a nationally ranked volleyball team.
But… it’s not like you haven’t had time to get used to it.
In fact, you’ve had three months to get used to it—and even longer before that to come to terms with the possibility of being a captain. There had been murmurs about it all year—murmurs that you had to work hard to learn how to tune out—going all the way back to when Kuroo made his proclamation at the beginning of his captaincy. At the time, you couldn’t even bring yourself to be truly mad at him for bringing so much attention toward you, and guaranteeing that it would stay on you all year. You flubbed almost all of your sets that first week, your hands were shaking so bad.
After the shit you pulled at nationals against Sarukawa, the murmurs got louder. Despite being in the middle of a tournament—and even after you guys got eliminated, people kept giving you looks. Like they wanted to tell you that there’s always next time, or like they were saying that you were the one that would get them there.
Well there won’t be an next time because Kuroo and the others are leaving. And like hell you could be half the leader he was. Kuro, Yaku and Kai were on another level. As much as you love Tora and Shouhei, the three of you just aren’t there yet.
They made the official announcement at the end of afternoon practice on January 14—exactly one week after Nekoma lost to Karasuno in the third round.
That was the third years’ last practice.
You swallowed the urge to point at Yamamoto and yell, “HE SHOULD BE THE CAPTAIN!” and then turn to Fukunaga and scream, “HE SHOULD BE THE VICE CAPTAIN!” Instead, you bowed and thanked them; you might not have asked for it, but you’re not that ungrateful.
They named Fukunaga as your vice, and Yamamoto the ace. They handed out jerseys, and the heavens must have been smiling down at you, because Kuroo bypassed you and handed Yamamoto the number one. Then he handed you the number two jersey with a pointed look at the little line beneath the number signifying you as captain, and immediately moved on to Fukunaga. Inuoka got four, and Tamahiko got your old number.
You didn’t expect things to change so much so fast, especially with it being the off-season, but suddenly the third years were gone and you were the one leading practice. Just like you thought, being captain-in-training was hard. It involved a lot of running onto and off of the court, discussing plays with the coaches, then actually carrying them out. Practice was lively even without the third years, but you kept finding yourself expecting to hear Yaku yell at Lev to focus on his form and to stop getting so distracted; and looking for Kai to clap his hands to signal the end of every drill. Instead there was Shibayama who high-fived Lev every time he got five receives in a row, and Fukunaga who stuck his fingers in his mouth to whistle so loud that it would echo through the entire gym.
But there was one thing you were acutely aware that you never did. Not once did you hold your hand out for a water bottle. It was a habit built over years, because since you started playing volleyball, Kuroo would always hand you his after he got a sip. But for that first practice until now, you haven’t slipped up a single time. You stuck your water bottle—still the same bright blue as Kuroo’s because you’re more used to drinking from that bottle than your own yellow one, and you’d rather not accidentally grab one of your teammates’ bottles—by Coach Nekomata’s chair. Every time you see it you’re reminded to take a sip. You think he would be proud.
Despite not staying, though, in his own weird way, Kuroo had stayed around. He never outright came to practice, but he always waited in the club room or the library as he read or did homework. Then, he picked you up at the gym, waited for you to finish changing, then walked home with you like he always did. After the first few times you told him to just go home without you, but he told you that it was fine, that he wanted to study at school because he liked to keep his house a schoolwork-free zone. You bit your tongue and didn’t call him out, even though you’d go to his house for tutoring before every exam—not to mention all the times you’d peeked outside your window after a long raid, and his lamp was still on at three in the morning.
It’s been off for a week now, ever since he left for the dorms.
Finally, the ache in your neck gets too painful to ignore and you drop your feet back to the floor. It takes another moment for you to push yourself off the chair and stand up. The three feet it takes to get to your bed takes much longer than it should to cross, but you eventually fold the blankets back and tuck yourself into bed.
You know you’re just procrastinating going to sleep. But you have to. Your mind is still buzzing with the possibilities of what could go wrong tomorrow when the first years arrive. Sure you, Shouhei, and Tora have been figuring out how to work in tandem to lead the team—hell, they’ve even taken over saying Kuroo’s stupid, stupid chant every time you guys have a joint practice with another school…But what if they think you’re arrogant? You’ve been treating it like an inside joke these past couple of months, but what if the first years hear your obnoxiously supportive teammates say that, and think that you’re some self-centered douche who thinks he should be the focus of the team just because he’s captain?
Or maybe they’ll think you’re bossy? Or a know-it-all? The rest of the team is used to you making suggestions during practice and even during matches. Analyzing the opponent is something you do subconsciously. The information just comes in, and your observations come out. Usually it ends up useful; Kuroo, Kai, and Yaku liked it last year, and the coaches always listened. Yeah, a captain is kind of expected to do that type of thing, but what if you do it too much? Or you make a wrong call?
What if you walk into practice tomorrow and the entire first year class is just a bunch of unruly Levs? You don’t think you can take a year-long headache. Or what if you walk into practice tomorrow and there are no new prospective members? You can’t just leave the team with no first years. Nekoma Men’s Volleyball isn’t small by any means, but you can’t graduate and leave a team of only second-going-on-third years. That would be a nightmare.
The only worse thing you can think of is… What if you walk into practice tomorrow and there’s a genius setter that takes your spot? You wouldn’t be able to say no if it was the best decision for the team. You would have to step aside, push Tamahiko down a level, and become the backup setter again. But isn’t that better? You wouldn’t have to move around as much, and arguably, it would be better to stay on the sidelines. That way you could be constantly watching your team so you can recognize patterns in behavior before they turn into bad habits that could cost you a match.
But being with Kuroo for so long has made you selfish. Being exposed to Shouyou in the past year has made it even worse, and sparked a constant desire that you’ve only felt in short bursts before.
Recently, you’ve noticed something. Something that makes your stomach drop and your fingers ache, that you haven’t told anyone yet. Not that you usually tell people things, what with Kuroo being able to read you so well that he usually just tells people for you. But you haven’t told him either, and you don’t think he knows. Honestly, it’s less of a thought and more a sensation. Flashes of images at first, hopes that make your pulse pick up a bit and make your breathing shallower. You think, privately, quietly, in half-formed thoughts, that you might like to play volleyball in college with Kuroo. To spend three more years sharing a court with him, and to see the face he makes after you win a game with him.